Background
Her father was mayor of Oudegem, and she spent her first years at the local village school, later at the age of 9, she was sent to a boarding school in Wallonia.
Her father was mayor of Oudegem, and she spent her first years at the local village school, later at the age of 9, she was sent to a boarding school in Wallonia.
This brought her into contact with the Flemish movement, and Prudens van Duyse, Frans Rens, Ferdinand Snellaert, and January Frans Willems. lieutenant inspired her to write an historical novel Bertha Baldwin (1871), about the 14th century battle of the Flemings against France. Her husband taught her Flemish again, after which she wrote her first poem in 1939, which was published in the Nederduitsch letterkundig jaarboekje.
In 1844 they moved to Lier.
To earn a living, she opened a boarding school in Maldegem, but it wasn’t a success and she had to close the school. The Koninklijk Atheneum Mevrouw Courtmans (East:Royal Athenaeum Madam Courtmans) is now located at the same location, in the Mevrouw Courtmanslaan.
Although she was a pious catholic, she reacted against the so-called catholic schools (Dutch: Kantscholen), which she considered to be centers of underpaid child labor, and which did no pay enough attention to reading, mathematics, geography and history. Her position in the schoolstrijd (East: schoolbattle), earned her the scorn of the local clergy.
As a writer, she started to write in prose at a later age, but her first novels, such as Helena van Leliëndal were not very successful.
Probably her most famous novel, Het geschenk van de jager (Fr: Le Cadeau du chasseur, East: gift of the hunter) (1865), was rewarded with the Quinquennial Prize for Dutch Literature.
(Lang:- Dutch, Pages 199. Reprinted in 2013 with the help ...)